The mobile phone technology, gender inclusive education and public accountability in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This study assesses the relevance of mobile phone technology in complementing gender inclusive education (i.e. primary, secondary and tertiary) to promote public accountability (i.e. involving horizontal, vertical and diagonal accountability dynamics). The study utilizes the generalized method of moments (GMM) technique to establish the empirical evidence based on 48 Sub-Saharan African countries for the period 2005-2018. The following findings are documented from the linkages between mobile phone technology, inclusive education and public accountability. First, the interactions between mobile phone technology and inclusive education promote public accountability. Second, with regard to net effects, while unexpected negative signs are established, the corresponding positive interactive effects indicate that enhancing the penetration of mobile phone technology beyond some critical thresholds ensures positive net effects. Hence, policy makers should ensure that mobile phone technology penetration exceeds the established thresholds in order for gender inclusive education to positively affect public accountability.

Inclusive Education and Health Performance in Sub Saharan Africa

“… Independent Variable of Interest The main independent variable of interest is 2 inclusive education. Following the contemporary and the non-contemporary literature, education enrolment is said to be inclusive if measured by a gender parity index (Okkolin et al, 2010 ; Ali, 2015 ; Asongu et al, 2020 , 2021 ; World Bank, 2022 ). The study employed the primary, secondary and the tertiary enrolments all at gender parity indexes.…”

“…Education is considered an important factor which is known to influence health performance and inequalities in life expectancy (Asongu et al, 2021 ). Education in every society serves as a right for individuals and a principal component that determines socioeconomic status which tends to influence livelihood, especially in its dimension of health status.…”

Educational quality, social media and public accountability: a global perspective

“…It is essential to note that even though social media's primary purpose is not to facilitate policy discussions; it can impact policy formation, particularly in the field of governance. Beyond the purview of theoretical foundations, it is relevant to highlight that theory-building can be advanced by applied econometrics motivated by sound intuition in light of reasoning taken from current theoretical underpinnings (Asongu & Odhiambo, 2019a).This stance is consistent with extant literature that the scope of applied econometrics should not be restricted to investigations that reject or accept hypotheses based on current theoretical frameworks (Asongu et al, 2021;Costantini & Lupi, 2005).…”

Taxing Africa for Inclusive Human Development: The Mediating Role of Governance Quality

“…Prior GMM-centric literature has established five basic justifications for adopting GMM estimator in the literature (Asongu, 2019;Asongu, Adegboye, & Nnanna, 2021;Asongu, Adegboye, Ejemeyovwi, et al, 2021). These factors are discussed with no priority: (i) The number of cross-sections (i.e., N) must exceed the number of corresponding periods.…”